A sentence from an article in The New Yorker:
On test days, I sat next to Bob Isner or Bruce Gelfand or Ted Chapman or Donny Chamberlain — smart boys whose handwriting I could read — and divided my attention between his desk and the teacher’s eyes.There are four singular nouns (Bob, Bruce, Ted, Donny), a plural appositive (smart boys whose handwriting I could read), and a singular pronoun (his). Because the antecedent of his seems, if only for a moment, to be boys, the sentence is mildly confusing. (Confusing enough that I read it again and again and decided to write this post.)
Can a singular appositive help? Not really:
On test days, I sat next to Bob Isner or Bruce Gelfand or Ted Chapman or Donny Chamberlain — a smart boy whose handwriting I could read — and divided my attention between his desk and the teacher’s eyes.The sentence still sounds off, and now it might seem that smart boy refers only to Donny. Better would be a slight rewriting:
On test days, I sat next to Bob Isner or Bruce Gelfand or Ted Chapman or Donny Chamberlain — any smart boy whose handwriting I could read — and divided my attention between his desk and the teacher’s eyes.Any avoids the plural while making it clear that all four boys were worthy assistants. Problem solved.
In college there was a guy who had me pegged as one of the “smart boys.” He would sit behind me and nudge and nudge. I would inch my desk forward and hunch over my exam booklet, thinking Leave me the . . . .
[By the way, the article, about a mathematician, is worth reading.]
comments: 3
Do you think "days" might be adding to the plural-ness? Since he is referring to more than one day then there is the expectation he sat next to more than one person.
How about:
"On a test day, I sat next to either Bob or Bruce or Ted or Donny—all smart boys whose..."
Tricky sentence.
Excellent post, Michael. I run into problems like that all the time. It helps to see someone else thinking about them.
I tried to read Alec Wilkinson's New Yorker article. Second paragraph is typical of writing I can't stand. It could have been omitted entirely, except for the first sentence.
Usually I stop reading by the 2nd or 3rd paragraph when the words per unit of meaning ratio is so high. What was it Seinfeld said? "Always leave them wanting more."
“The paper I can’t evaluate off the top of my head, my role is to know whom to ask,” Katz said.
"Whom"? Is that right?
Sean, I hadn’t thought of days as part of the problem. “On Wednesdays, I would go to London or Paris or Rome”: saying something like that seems fine to me. But given the trouble in the New Yorker sentence, a singular start would be helpful. (What kind of high school lets you change your seat for a test anyway?)
Arthurian, thanks for the compliment. As an outcast from higher mathematics, I appreciate the second paragraph, but I can see that someone who knows pure mathematics could find it tiresome.
“Whom to ask” is right: my role is to know to ask him or her, not he or she. But as many people have pointed out, whom in speech can often sound awkward and unnatural or like a hypercorrection. (“Whom shall I say is calling?”)
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